Journal of Physics B Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics
Propagation of single-excitation quantum states through Jaynes–Cummings–Hubbard arrays
R. Chakrabarti, G Sreekumari
Abstract
We study the dynamics of a one-dimensional array of the Jaynes–Cummings–Hubbard system of arbitrary number of coupled cavities, each containing a two-level atom that interacts with a field mode. In particular, we consider the propagation of a single-excitation quantum state for two different couplings between the localized photonic modes of the adjacent cavities, namely a translation invariant uniform coupling on a closed chain of cavities, and also a nonuniform parabolically varying intercavity coupling on a linear chain where the interaction Hamiltonian is associated with the Jacobi matrix of the relevant Krawtchouk polynomial. Using a description via the delocalized atomic and field modes, we observe that for a large detuning of these two degrees of freedom, atomic excitations propagate without populating the field modes, and vice versa. For the near-resonance scenario between these modes, the atomic excitations, say, while propagating mix with the photonic states. In the context of the parabolic coupling between photons of adjacent cavities, the time-dependent correlation function describing the propagation of the quantum state between two arbitrary sites may be expressed in closed form for dominant values of the detuning parameter, when an exact transmission of the quantum state at pre-specified times is realized.